Lady Lakers take down Parkview with 5-1 win

The Camdenton Lady Laker soccer team improves to 12-3-1 on the season and 4-1-0 in Ozark Conference play as they defeated Parkview on Tuesday night 5-1 at Springfield.

Senior Whitney Snow continued her offensive dominance by scoring 4 of Camdenton’s 5 goals bringing her total for the season to 40, which is second all-time in the Lady Lakers program’s history.

Camdenton started the scoring off early when only six minutes in junior Bri Bullock played a pass from senior Morgan Henry, got by the keeper who had attempted a diving save and was able to dribble the ball into the net.

Snow earned her first goal of the night nine minutes later with a left-footed 30-yard strike from the left side of the field that hit the far post and caromed behind the keeper and into the goal.

Camdenton maintained possession the majority of the first half, but no further goals could be found. With a 2-0 lead to start the second half, Snow wasted no time in getting her second goal of the match five minutes into play when she found herself on a breakaway on a counter after a rare Parkview attack.

“Snow was able to hug on that last defender and once Parkview pushed up a bit, Morgan was able to steal the ball off of a Parkview player’s foot and quickly find Whitney for the easy goal. Those two are definitely fun to watch play together,” observed Camdenton coach J.D. Hunter.

Not to be outdone, however, Parkview mounted a comeback and quickly got their own goal to bring the score to 3-1.

“We are struggling to preserve shutouts, but we are still doing so many of the right things defensively. Sometimes, however, we just get on the wrong side of players and give them channels we really shouldn’t be giving them. We have identified the problems and now we’re going to try to fix them. That’s really all we can do at this point, but I’m still very happy with the direction we are heading.”

With the help of some freshmen, including Raleigh Johns and Abby Braur who each had assists to Snow in the second half, Whitney was able to find the back of the net two more times to put the match out of reach.

“Raleigh Johns had a really nice cross in to Snow who was able to score off a header late in the match and we are really starting to see some production out of Johns and some other underclassmen.”

This contribution was definitely needed as freshman Natalie Schulte and junior Nicole Amerine were forced to miss the majority of the match with injuries.

Page 2 of 2 - “At this point, it becomes a matter of what team can avoid injuries the most and while we have some players beat up a bit, with the bench that we are starting to develop, we have the opportunity to rest some starters more and let them heal up before districts begin.”

The Lady Lakers return to action on Friday night as they host the annual Camdenton Tournament.

Their first game of the tournament, Friday at 6 p.m., will be against Carl Junction. It will also serve as the Lady Lakers' senior night.